The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters

Publisher's Summary:

One postwar summer in his home of rural Warwickshire, Dr. Faraday, the son of a maid who has built a life of quiet respectability as a country physician, is called to a patient at lonely Hundreds Hall. Home to the Ayres family for over two centuries, the Georgian house, once impressive and handsome, is now in decline, its masonry crumbling, its gardens choked with weeds, the clock in its stable yard permanently fixed at twenty to nine. Its owners—mother, son, and daughter—are struggling to keep pace with a changing society, as well as with conflicts of their own. But are the Ayreses haunted by something more sinister than a dying way of life? Little does Dr. Faraday know how closely, and how terrifyingly, their story is about to become intimately entwined with his. 

My thoughts:

I've been wanting to read a Sarah Waters book for a few years now. I watched Tipping the Velvet a few years ago and I absolutely adored it. So I jumped at the chance to read The Little Stranger when I saw it at my library's book sale and saw that it was a historical fiction haunted house story! I love haunted house stories. There's something especially horrifying about them. Is it that the home has usually been the domain of women and once those are haunted it's a metaphor for the haunting of women?

Waters delves into the historical aspect of post World War Britain and how the old gentry families were changed after the war. They had a hard time catching up with modernity.

Dr. Faraday visits Hundreds Hall on a house call for the Ayres' servant Betty. He hasn't been at the house since he came with his mother when he was a small boy and she was a servant at Hundreds Hall. He's been fascinated with it ever since. He soon becomes involved with all the Ayres, Roderick who was injured during the war, Caroline who is unmarried and becoming a bit of a spinster and Mrs. Ayres who is struggling to go on after the war and who is also continually grieving her lost daughter. Shortly after Dr. Faraday's first visit strange occurrences begin at Hundreds Hall. Is it the work of a ghost, Mrs. Ayres' dead daughter or something more malevolent?

It's a slow burn but all engaging. It's a great gothic story that tells more than just ghosts in a big house. As the family's fears are laid out to bear, we are left with an agonizing feeling of what the hell is going on? How reliable is our narrator? The whole story is dark and moody. Waters does a brilliant job letting the house take on a dark persona all its own.

I thoroughly enjoyed the journey and recommend it for anyone who loves a good historical gothic mystery.

*read for R.I.P XIII and FrightFall reading challenges.